The myth of language universals

Evans, N., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(5), 429-448.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2009

DOI

10.1017/s0140525x0999094x

Link

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999094X

Cited from

sociology_anthropology

Cited by

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Native-Category Flattening
  • In translation and cross-linguistic NLP, source-language distinctions of aspect, evidentiality, or kinship collapse into target-language defaults when translation skips an intermediate stage that preserves the source.

    This sourceDocuments how source-language distinctions of kinship, aspect, and evidentiality collapse when forced into a target-language or universal scheme — cross-linguistic native-category loss.

Domain-specific

• Universal grammar
  • The entry records a descriptive analytical identity; practical use requires the governing domain's evidence, standards, and safety obligations.

Verification

This reference passed the adversarial substantiation pipeline: it was checked to exist and to support the claim it is attached to. See how references were verified.

Registry ID ref:597510e3cff6 · see in the full table